


Stitches

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Blood and Injury, Book 5: The Ringed Castle, Field Surgery, Gen, Past Drug Addiction, Stitches, genderswap fergie hoddim, glasnost era ussr, non-binary danny hislop, the band Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2021-02-01 04:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21381076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: It's 1987 and Lymond is touring the USSR with a group of musicians and sound artists. Something goes wrong one night though, and Adam Blacklock returns to the apartment covered in his own blood.--Written for Whumptober 2019, set in the Band AU I've been writing (see collections).--There's 31 of these ficlets and I apologise profusely for burying other work in the tags. I will *always* tag these as 'the band au' and you can usethis nifty extension (ao3rdr)to block the tag if this isn't your thing and isn't what you want to see in the Lymond tags!
Kudos: 2
Collections: Ficlets in the Lymond Band AU for Whumptober 2019





	Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr, 11 October 2019.](https://notasapleasure.tumblr.com/post/188275502607/whumptober-11)

“Jesus, Adam!”

The four occupants of the small Moscow apartment jumped to their feet, sending stools clattering to bare wooden boards. Their neighbour banged on the thin wall and a voice objected to the sound.

“Izvinite!” Alec Guthrie apologised to the wall as he, Fergie and Danny raced towards their flatmate. Ludo remained hunched by the coffee table, staring at Adam Blacklock with unconcealed horror.

Adam stood in the doorway, his hands gripping the frame so tightly that Danny and Fergie had to pry him free. What they could see of his face was as grey as the tiles in the stairwell, but at least half of his features were obscured by a shock of colour: red, brighter than anything else in the apartment. Red, like Soviet art on a concrete building.

From just below his chin, up across his cheek in a diagonal scrawl, a wound oozed sluggishly. His jaw and mouth - and his plaid shirt besides - bore waves of blood that had dried to various degrees. Whatever had caused it (something sharp, slashing upwards) had nicked the bridge of his nose and the eyebrow on the opposite side of his face. His eye itself looked undamaged, but the pupil was large and dark with shock, and the wound above it had begun to swell.

“What happened to ye?” Guthrie backed away to push LPs and magazines off the sofa, where Fergie and Danny guided Adam to a limp-limbed sprawl and sat on either side of him.

“I’m alright,” Adam slurred, batting a hand at the air between him and Danny before dropping it to his hip. He shifted uncomfortably and massaged the joint of his bad leg, and when he grimaced at the discomfort it made the blood well again in his wounds.

“Of course you’re not alright,” Danny told him, glancing up at Guthrie and Ludo with a customary wry twinkle in those pale blue eyes. “You’ve got a gammy leg and you chose an apartment room four floors up in a block without a lift. I’d say you’re a raging masochist, but I don’t like to judge.”

Adam managed a snort of mirth for this performative statement and settled for clenching his fist in his lap as he stared at the floor.

Guthrie crouched to try and meet his gaze. “What happened, lad?”

Adam’s lips pursed and thinned as he tried to force out the words. His neck tensed and Danny rubbed a comforting hand over his shoulder blades. “It was - it was. It was - Lymond,” he stammered. “Guitar strings snapped.”

“Christ,” Fergie breathed, shaking her head at Danny across Adam’s gently rocking back.

A number of questions hung on lips, or began and ended in half-swallowed sounds of doubt and wonder —

“How?”

“Where were ye?”

“This was an _accident_?”

— but it was Ludo who commanded quiet from the murmurs of the others.

“He needs stitches.”

Adam looked up with apprehension. “Do you know the Russian - the Russian for - for -” he rolled his eyes at Fergie, who nodded in understanding.

“For ‘no opiates please, I’m a recovering addict’?”

Adam’s hand gripped his shaking thigh and he swore ruefully. “Yeah. That.”

None of them did know how to convey this to hospital staff. And Adam was chary about any suggestions of calling for Güzel, their PR manager, to arrange things. So it happened that Ludovic d'Harcourt, sometime first-aider in a Rajneeshee commune, brought Adam paracetamol and vodka, and warned him that neither of them would enjoy what was about to happen - but that both would enjoy it significantly less if Adam could not keep still.

Danny, Fergie and Guthrie held onto him, and watched Ludo thread his needle.


End file.
